GLOBAL-CHANGE IN MICROCOSM - THE CASE OF US-WATER-INSTITUTIONS

Water is a resource that already has been affected by some aspects of global change and whose availability in time and place may be substant ially further altered by global warming. As human demands and impacts on water resources have increased, institutions governing water use ha ve evolved in response to pressures exerted by competing resource user s. The record of such institutional evolution and its implications for the impacts of environmental change on human welfare can provide a gl impse of issues that are likely to arise as other natural resources ar e increasingly subject to the effects of global environmental transfor mations. Efforts to manage multiple interdependent water uses present informative analogies to the general problem of managing the many inte rrelated aspects of global change.